39,800 ha of plantation areas looted last year
39,800 ha of plantation areas looted last year
JAKARTA (JP): At least 39,800 hectares of plantations were
looted during 1998, causing an estimated material loss of around
Rp 196 billion (about US$26 million), a senior official of the
Ministry of Forestry and Plantations has said.
"Most of the looted plantations are oil palm and rubber
plantations, the majority located in North Sumatra and East
Java," Director General of Plantations Agus Pakpahan said on
Tuesday.
He added that the loss was calculated by taking into account
the volume of the commodities produced by the plantation firms
which had been looted. The figure excluded any loss that had
resulted from damage to and arson of facilities.
Looters have hit hundreds of thousands of metric tons of oil
palm fruit, latex, cocoa beans and other items as well as
destroying plantation facilities such as vehicles, processing
plants and even employees' houses, Agus said.
The plantation security personnel were usually outnumbered by
the looters, he said.
Agus added that a big plantation company in North Sumatra had
to deal with an average of between 30 and 50 cases of looting per
month in 1998.
He said that calls from the plantation firms to the
authorities for security reinforcements had gone unheeded.
"The government will solve these problems and will continue to
improve the security of plantation firms," he said.
The country is facing the worst economic crisis in its
history. The number of poor has soared, and cases of rampant
theft and looting have also increased greatly in certain pockets
of the country.
The looters, mostly people from villages neighboring the
affected plantations, plundered the plantations because they
consider that the firms have contributed nothing to the
improvement of local welfare, Agus said.
Agus also said that his office is currently investigating an
alleged case of collusive practices in the licensing of 33
plantation firms.
Agus said that 33 plantation companies, whose concessions
cover 303,000 hectares, had allegedly obtained their licenses to
convert forests into plantations through KKN, a local acronym for
corruption, collusion and nepotism practices.
"We are currently trying to find evidence demonstrating the
alleged violations in the licensing procedures," he said.
Agus, however, declined to reveal the names of the suspect
KKN-connected plantation companies, but said that most of them
operated in East Kalimantan, North Sumatra and Riau provinces.
(gis)